The Money Powers

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and
causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war,
corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places
will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong
its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is
aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this
moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in
the midst of war.

Abraham Lincoln - In a letter written to William
Elkin less than five months before he was assassinated.

The money power preys on the nation in times of peace, and conspires
against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more
insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as
public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its
crimes.

Abraham Lincoln

A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our
system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation and all our
activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the
worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated
Governments in the world - no longer a Government of free opinion no longer
a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by
the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men....

Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me
privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce
and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They
know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful,
so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak
above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

Woodrow Wilson - In The New Freedom (1913)

The fact is that there is a serious danger of this country becoming a
pluto-democracy; that is, a sham republic with the real government in the
hands of a small clique of enormously wealth men, who speak through their
money, and whose influence, even today, radiates to every corner of the
United States.

William McAdoo - President Wilson's national
campaign vice-chairman, wrote in Crowded Years (1974)

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of
their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and
corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of
their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent
their fathers conquered.

Thomas Jefferson

The system of banking [is] a blot left in all our Constitutions, which,
if not covered, will end in their destruction... I sincerely believe that
banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the
principle of spending money to be paid by posterity... is but swindling
futurity on a large scale.

Thomas Jefferson

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties
than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that
has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from
the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.

Thomas Jefferson

... To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn
around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of
power, no longer susceptible of any definition. The incorporation of a
bank, and the powers assumed by this bill [chartering the first Bank of the
United States], have not, been delegated to the United States by the
Constitution.

Thomas Jefferson - in opposition to the chartering
of the first Bank of the United States (1791).

We have stricken the (slave) shackles from four million human beings and
brought all laborers to a common level not so much by the elevation of
former slaves as by practically reducing the whole working population,
white and black, to a condition of serfdom. While boasting of our noble
deeds, we are careful to conceal the ugly fact that by an iniquitous money
system we have nationalized a system of oppression which,though more
refined, is not less cruel than the old system of chattel slavery.

Horace Greeley - (1811-1872) founder of the New York Tribune

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in
society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system
that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

Frederic Bastiat - (1801-1850) in Economic Sophisms

The powers of financial capitalism had (a) far-reaching aim, nothing
less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands
able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of
the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist
fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret
agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the
systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel,
Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central
banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central
bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury
loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic
activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by
subsequent economic rewards in the business world.

Prof. Carroll Quigley in Tragedy and Hope

In a small Swiss city sits an international organization so obscure and
secretive....Control of the institution, the Bank for International
Settlements, lies with some of the world's most powerful and least visible
men: the heads of 32 central banks, officials able to shift billions of
dollars and alter the course of economies at the stroke of a pen.

Keith Bradsher of the New York Times, August 5, 1995

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is eager to enter into close
relationship with the Bank for International Settlements....The conclusion
is impossible to escape that the State and Treasury Departments are willing
to pool the banking system of Europe and America, setting up a world
financial power independent of and above the Government of the United
States....The United States under present conditions will be transformed
from the most active of manufacturing nations into a consuming and
importing nation with a balance of trade against it.

Rep. Louis McFadden - Chairman of the House Committee
on Banking and Currency quoted in the New York Times (June 1930)

Nothing did more to spur the boom in stocks than the decision made by
the New York Federal Reserve bank, in the spring of 1927, to cut the
rediscount rate. Benjamin Strong, Governor of the bank, was chief advocate
of this unwise measure, which was taken largely at the behest of Montagu
Norman of the Bank of England....At the time of the Banks action I warned
of its consequences....I felt that sooner or later the market had to
break.

Money baron Bernard Baruch in Baruch: The Public Years (1960)

The Federal Reserve Bank is nothing but a banking fraud and an unlawful
crime against civilization. Why? Because they "create" the money made out
of nothing, and our Uncle Sap Government issues their "Federal Reserve
Notes" and stamps our Government approval with NO obligation whatever from
these Federal Reserve Banks, Individual Banks or National Banks, etc.

H.L. Birum, Sr., American Mercury, August 1957, p. 43

[The] abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare
statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of
credit.... In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect
savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of
value. If there were, the government would have to make its holdings
illegal, as was done in the case of gold.... The financial policy of the
welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to
protect themselves.... [This] is the shabby secret of the welfare statist's
tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 'hidden'
confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process.
It stands as a protector of property rights.